discouraged.

Last night, I left work on time solely due to my bargain with the devil of bringing my laptop home and planning on about another few hours of work later that evening.

It was a beautiful day. I didn't hit any traffic. (Such as it exists in Vermont.) I got to the barn right when I wanted to. Tristan was looking great. I got out my tack, and put together my old figure 8 bridle for an experiment.

I had a good riding plan: I put his old kimberwicke in the figure 8 to see if we could nip the bolting and jackassery in the bud, and settle down to actually schooling outside. If - as past experience indicated - he hit the curb chain once or twice and then settled down, then I had a conditioning ride planned with some long canters. I wanted to get some of the fuss out of him before trying an actual dressage ride in the big outdoor the next day.

I buckled the last strap of the figure 8 and stepped back to take a picture of his new bitting getup, because blogging.

Then I saw that I had missed three calls from my husband. I called him back.

He was stuck in non-moving traffic because of an accident on the main road of the city he worked in. Even if he got on the highway literally that moment, he was still 45 minutes away from home.

I had dropped the dog off at daycare that morning so she could get some exercise and socialization on a beautiful day.

He called at 5:30. Daycare closed at 6:00.

I hung up and stood there for such a long moment, just staring at Tristan's face, at the bridle I had just finished putting on him. I had to focus on breathing deeply. I could feel tears stinging, but I fought them. It was one of those moments of perfect, exquisite misery, when there is only one thing you can do but every fiber of your being is screaming that you don't want to.

I took the bridle off. I took the saddle off. I put my tack away. I put Tristan's sheet back on. I fed him his grain. I closed the barn door. I picked my dog up from daycare, and I went home.

I opened up my laptop, and I worked until 9pm.

I am so tired.

Riding and LASIK Surgery

I have been pretty severely nearsighted my entire life. It runs in the family; my father and most of his brothers are quite nearsighted as well. (Both of my brothers escaped, which is unfair.) If I'm not correcting my vision, the whole world looks like a Monet painting. I could not read the computer screen without leaning or squinting; forget driving or riding.

For many years, I wore contact lenses. In fact, I wore them far too much. My optometrist told me that my eyes started growing extra blood vessels to get oxygen to my starved corneas. (Which is apparently a thing, ack.) So I eased off, wearing my glasses more and more.

I tried to switch back to contact lenses about 9 months ago, and discovered that I can't really tolerate them anymore. My eyes get so dry so quickly that I was squinting badly. I either got headaches or fell asleep mid-afternoon - the dry eye sensation was remarkably like a heavy eyelid feeling of exhaustion. No drops helped. No change in the fit of my contacts helped.

So, glasses it is. 24/7. For obvious reasons, wearing glasses while riding horses kind of sucks. Dust gets everywhere, glasses slip and slide on the nose when you get sweaty, and you can't wear sunglasses so if it's bright you're squinting.

riding with glasses

I've been thinking a lot lately about getting corrective vision surgery. I'm really sick of my glasses. I'm sick of not seeing well. I want my peripheral vision and my flexibility back.

I've been doing a lot of research and really the only remaining question for me is one of cost. So I'm going to call my insurance company and see if they will chip in for it. If not, the decision will be whether I pay off my car first (which will happen in 18 months) or borrow money through CareCredit. I really have no clear idea how much this costs!

Has anyone had LASIK surgery, or investigated it? Any thoughts on riding with less than great vision?

Training Level Test 1

Whelp, I've officially entered Tristan for a schooling dressage show on June 5. I skimmed the tests and picked Training 1 and Training 2 for...no real reason other than they're sequential. It's been so long since we've attempted a test all the way through that I have no really good sense of what will play to his strengths, and honestly sussing that out is not gonna happen before the entry deadline.

So, I've been looking more closely at Training 1.

1. Centerline, halt, turn left. Potential pitfalls: halting square, picking up the trot again without a tantrum, heading straight toward the judge's box. Beginner Novice B, I MISS YOU AND YOUR BENDING LINE ENTRANCE.

2. Track left, circle in the center. Potential pitfalls: geometry. Bulging right shoulder. Staying in the arena.

3. Transition to canter, turn left. Potential pitfalls: crossing the entrance again; Tristan might see an easy way out. Also, our canter transitions are pretty much mired in suck right now. At least the left transition is as far away from the judge as it gets.

4/5. Canter circle in the center, back to trot. Potential pitfalls: Staying on the circle in the canter, especially left. Geometry. Staying in the ring.

6/7. Free walk across the diagonal. Potential pitfalls: picking the medium walk back up for F. 

8/9. Trot transition, circle right in the center. Potential pitfalls: staying on the circle, a not-ugly transition at A.

10/11/12. Canter transition, circle in the center, trot transition. Potential pitfalls: as mentioned above, our canter transitions are ugh. Geometry always a concern in the canter. Timing the transition back to trot.

13. Centerline, halt, salute. Potential pitfalls: making the turn, keeping the centerline straight, getting the halt square.

The good news: this gives me some marching orders. In particular, those canter transitions. Fix them and we'll nail down a lot of the other problems - especially the shoulder-flinging.

I've been working on the trot-walk-free walk and back again transitions for a little while now. Tris has a great free walk, mostly because he's so relieved I let him do what he wants. The trick is keeping it marching - we've mostly got that, but it will be different in the other ring. I need to be more subtle and tactful about picking the reins back up, too.

In short: while I have no doubt we can get the basic test done, I need to polish some of the pieces. All of them are well within our capabilities. I wish I hadn't hit a valley right when we need to be ramping up for this test, though.

House Post: Basement Storage, Part One of ???

This will be a very much in-progress kind of post, but let it serve as a marker. I'm slowly chipping away at solving our basement storage.

When we first moved in, the basement was the dumping ground. Which made total sense at the time, and I don't regret it. But going down there was an exercise in claustrophobia and anxiety - at least for me, considering the contentment I get out of well-organized spaces with everything in its right place.

But over the winter and the last few weeks, we've slowly chipped away at that: emptying boxes and getting their contents put away, thinking through what should go where, buying new storage containers to actually organize things that would stay in the basement.

Several weeks ago, when we had friends staying with us (the same ones who stripped our wallpaper), I enlisted their help to move the giant shelving unit that sat just at the base of the stairs.

By giant, I mean probably 20' long, 5' deep, and about 4.5' tall. That meant that it was basically too big to be usable for us. I'm honestly not sure what previous owners used it for - storage of things they never wanted to see again? For us, it just attracted clutter. I think the longterm plan will be to dismantle it and take it to the dump, but I can't bring myself to do that quite yet.

So anyway: the shelving unit got shoved right.

Most of what's on the floor was either a) on top of that shelving unit and moved so we could pick it up or b) has since been sent to its appropriate home. But it gives you a taste of what our basement was like and why I wanted to organize it!

Here's the space that was left. This was taken standing at the very foot of the stairs. You can see the wall of the new garage on the left.

And voila! New shelving with surplus kitchen things on it. It's easy to run down and grab less frequently used things (canning supplies, old dishes, the large crockpot for entertaining).

One of my someday dream frivolous projects is to pull everything away from the walls and have them sandblasted and then repainted all white. As you can see, our whole basement was painted white and pink and since that time (the 1970s?) moisture has seriously eroded the paint, which flakes away horribly if you so much as look at the wall. I used the shopvac on the wall before putting the shelving in (you can see the difference in paint between the empty pic and the shelving pic) but it just didn't do enough. It got the major chunks, but that's it.

There's more storage stuff going on in other parts of the basement, slowly but surely turning it into a better space. Some problems haven't been resolved yet (see the canoe in the top picture? yeah.) but many of them have, and if I just keep chipping away I think by this time next year it'll be all set.

WW: Longeing

Short longeing session: I'm trying right now to focus on building muscle and strength, not necessarily fitness, so that means shorter, more intensive sessions right now.